Residents living in the Ravenswood area of Ipswich have been granted their request for a new cash machine in the community.

The cash machine is now at the Greenways Neighbourhood Centre on Nacton Road.

Ipswich town centre has more than 50 cash machines but members of the community in Ravenswood contacted LINK, the UK’s main cash machine network, to see if was possible for the community to get its own free-to-use ATM.

The area has a large new housing development and when LINK visited, it found that while there are a number of free to use machines and a local bank branch near the Euro retail park, for many residents, the journey involved a longer walk and meant crossing a busy road.

Following LINK’s intervention, this week a brand new 24/7 free to use ATM went live at Greenways Neighbourhood Centre.

As the number of free to use cash machines comes down over time, LINK’s role is to make sure that no one is more than 1km away from the nearest free to use ATM or Post Office counter. To support this, LINK launched its Community Request an ATM initiative in late 2019 and has helped to install almost 60 free to use ATMs across the country.

LINK’s head of financial Inclusion, Nick Quin said: “We’re delighted this new ATM has gone live. On paper, it looks like the area has more than enough ATMs, but it was thanks to a couple of locals who brought the situation to our attention that we were able to see that getting cash wasn’t the easiest to access for quite a lot of residents.

"If there are any other communities that are having difficulties accessing cash I would encourage them to get in touch.”